Colours

From Leeya Mehta's chapbook 'Towers of Silence' (AARK Arts, 2004). 'White' was first published in Fulcrum, 2004.

1
WHITE

I sit up in bed in the morning after you’ve smoothed me
Sandpapered me
And look at you
Standing staring at me
With your back to the window.
Stained glass I made lets in dawn.

My hair is long, unmessy
Most of my body is covered with a sheet
Yet I feel naked
As an ancient frozen corpse discovered alive -
Baffled in a new age by the sound of horns
Where once operas of droning land rose from the sea:
The shifting of continents

You did not keep me awake this night; we
Softened my desire
Before I fell asleep. And then you
Stood at the window all night
And you watched car lights, while I
Slept, dreaming of resurrection:
Returning to the sweetest past, a beginning
Before recollection.

I watch my feet on the floor, squeeze them to the tiles
You break your stare and turn away
I walk to you and touch you, you are cold and empty
Like a dead man with a vacuum soul.
What did the world do to you
I want to ask

But instead I hold you close, forgive your
Sins, so deep, so unforgivable
Let us pass into bearing
Stages.

Bearing pain, each other, bearing children,
Sad, posthumous adults
 

2
OXYGEN

blue unaerated nails need love
touch that restarts breath


 
3
YELLOW, 1957
 
He brought home a chick
A tennis ball of yellow mirth
That watched him - an artist studying its muse.
It decided, quite like she had once believed,
That he was its perfect father, 
Knowing no better.
She named it Miss Peckpeck even though
He refused to accept this Anglicised obviousness
And called it Sakubai just like he had named
Every one of her dolls. Blonde and brunette.
Miss Peckpeck knew that he was the head of the
House. Something she was beginning to resist at five and a half
Seeing no rationality in his whippings.
His Sakubai greeted him after work at the
Front door every evening at six.
Five inches tall it couldn’t hug him
So it made up by running with eager concentration at his heel
Like a pom pom on his sock.
He had to be careful, one wrong step and it was
Sakubai the chick with grievous damage to its
Chuffed out chest
It needed time to gauge distances
Nor did it like to be left out of after dinner
Kisses and demanded its own sleeping arrangements.
He rocked it into chicken dreams in his handkerchief,
Its golden fuzz quivering in the breeze.
Sakubai terminated its childhood four weeks after its arrival.
It wanted to know what lay inside a shallow bucket
Used to soak socks in, fell over and drowned.

Concussion followed by ingestion of water, she was told, years
Later, in her thirties. On the day of the drowning she had
Returned from Saturday school
And he said that Sakubai had been sent to a farm
Where she would be free with her own kind.
He wanted her childhood to be innocent -
Without the grief of Miss Peckpeck’s
‘Curiosity killed the cat’ story.
“Five and a half, too young for death,” her father said,
“I wanted to protect you.”
She said, “You knew about it and still you didn’t do anything?”
“There you go,” he said. She explained, shouting, “There was a
Watchman with black encrusted nails in school who took me
Into a classroom every break. I was five then, not
Five and a bloody half.”
“Can’t you talk softly?” he said. “Must you always make
Your point? You’ve turned this house into a fish market.”
Their fights started like that, freak bullets that always missed
His heart, and came from hers.


4
CHALCEDONY

At the river’s soft purring trembling heart
We shared our secrets, our cold soot secrets.
 
The river listened and when we rose to go
It wept white opaque tears, bruising its agate limbs.
 
I remember this river, fifty years have passed.
But you, you have twisted my secrets into a conspiracy —

I have inherited insanity and this blue-veined madness is
Our children’s heirloom.
 

5
BLANK

What colour is a scream?

 

From Leeya Mehta's chapbook 'Towers of Silence' (AARK Arts, 2004). 'White' was first published in Fulcrum, 2004.

Lure-Id - In memory of Francis Bacon

LURE-ID
In memory of Francis Bacon (1909-1992)

     A light-bulb hanging from the doom of heaven,
     Its wiring: human sinew twisted together

     The truth. As you came closer to your only other inevitable
     (not bottomless vacant-eyed sex), your cheeks came down

     Against your nose: fetal wings. Your eyes: goblin uncompassion.
     Your mouth in a black and white photograph: a moment’s abyss.

Come back to me as you were that first
Bright summer’s day, so beautiful with your

Daggers.
Don’t be human. Come back.


From Leeya Mehta's chapbook 'Towers of Silence' (AARK Arts, 2004)

The Abduction: essay

Since the Beloit Journal no longer carries the links, here is the original essay that I was invited to write to accompany the poem which appears here: https://www.bpj.org/contributors/mehta-leeya

At the beginning of The Abduction I construct a personal image of war; and as I am writing this note to accompany my poem, I believe we are again at war for the idea of India.

The Abduction begins among the spires of Oxford University in England, where I was a student and first heard about India’s nuclear tests in the Pokhran desert. Some of the images in the poem are from my life at Oxford. My bedroom overlooked a crab apple tree. I rode my bicycle over Magdalen bridge, under which boats passed on their way up the Cherwell River.

Other symbols in the poem are specific to my own cultural heritage as a Parsi Zoroastrian. Zoroastrianism predates Judaism and is considered to be the first monotheistic religion. My ancestors came to India from Persia fleeing religious persecution from Islam. In the poem I refer to some of those lost ancestors, who never made it to safety in India, and whose skeletons lie at the bottom of the Arabian Sea. The first Parsis landed on the beaches of Gujarat, the birthplace of Gandhi as well as the controversial Narendra Modi, India’s likely next Prime Minister. In India, Parsis found religious freedom and great economic opportunity.

The vision of India that I grew up with was deeply influenced by my socially liberal family and the school where I spent twelve years from Pre-K through tenth grade. I came to see India as a special place with transformative ideas: democracy, non-alignment, ahimsa or non-violence, non-proliferation and religious freedom.

Fissures began to appear in this utopian landscape around the time I went on to a new high school. It started with the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and Hindu-Muslim riots in Bombay. When the carnage began, a school friend dismissed it saying, “Only twenty Muslims have been killed so far.” A Hindu friend said of a fellow Muslim student, “Why doesn’t she just go back to Pakistan, where she belongs?” I remember saying, “But she was born here, she’s never been to Pakistan. This is her home.” A new cycle of violence had begun, and in 1993, Bombay had one of its worst terrorist attacks by the Muslim underworld.

In The Abduction I make a reference to the Gujarat pogrom against Muslims in 2002, after the Godhra train fire, which killed Hindu pilgrims and was blamed on Islamic terrorists. Muslim artist friends had to flee to neighboring states because they could not find sanctuary anywhere in Ahmedabad, the city of their birth, as hundreds of thousands of Muslims became internally displaced, lining the roads leading out of Gujarat.

Each time we repeat this cycle of violence, I am concerned that we are returning to that place when India was partitioned. Pakistan was partly created because Muslims believed that a Hindu India would not provide equal opportunity to its minority Muslim citizens. Muslim families were uprooted and went to Pakistan; Hindu families fled to India. A million people perished in this bloody migration. In spite of this, India continues to be home to nearly 180 million Muslims, the second largest Muslim population in the world.

In ‘Watching the Fifth War’, a short story set after the Indo-Pak conflict in Kargil in 1999, I wrote about how a Hindu and Muslim family inadvertently exchanged homes after India’s Partition. I was interested in the way we inhabit the same space as if we are simultaneously interlopers and brothers. In The Abduction, it is a similar dual nature that is personified by the twinned figures representing my inner battle between conscience and an alter ego, which in turn represents nationalism and a need to belong—to belong to a country, to a parochial history tied to blood and religion. The Asho Farohar that the narrator wears around her neck is the Zoroastrian guardian angel, symbolizing the soul’s battle between good and evil.

I visited Pokhran, where India's nuclear tests were conducted, shortly before going to Hiroshima in Japan. It was there that it became even clearer that it made no sense to own that which you will never use. If you have an atom bomb, you may, in fact, use it. For the narrator in The Abduction, the cycle of violence must end with her. This personal renunciation of blood nationalism is not an act of helplessness or futility even if there is an overwhelming sense of loss.

The idea of India has always been in conflict. I fear that with the ongoing election in India we might be heading into a dark period. This can perhaps be avoided if enough of us go through a struggle similar to the narrator's in the poem—one which Gandhi saw as an allegorical battle between our higher selves and the allure of the blood within. 

Poem: The Abduction (Beloit Poetry Journal)

https://www.bpj.org/contributors/mehta-leeya

THE ABDUCTION

Lines composed in the Thar desert, six years after India’s nuclear test

1

It’s been six years since angels crossed the road at springtime.

Six years ago the Cherwell carried boats of scrolls whose black letters sliced

through ivory sheets. We undid the blue ribbons and the words fell onto our feet,

cutting our flesh. We bled. Our feet caked, shards of T’s and Y’s stuck out as we

ran home in a sapphire meadow knee deep in water, grey spires suffocating as the

wings came down in millions around us.

That night at the ball we crammed strawberries into angels’ mouths but they

would not keep silent. “The desert is so still at night,” they said. “You can hear

the shifting of the sand.”

The juice from the berries dripped from their lips and splashed on our feet,

burning them. “My stinging skin, where is my home, where is my home?” I

asked. The night was fluorescent, your green dress fired cannonballs into the sky.

“It is time to celebrate,” you said, “not to mourn.”

We danced. Fireflies in the desert broke into homes, hovered over sleeping

children, entered bloodstreams, blew up spleens, burned up hearts, singed brains

and livers.

“The desert rose to the sky,” I said, but you had already forgiven them.

Your mouth covered my eyes, my tears made you spin round and round, your

waist-length hair catching the strobe lights. Your seduction was complete, how

could I resist you? You pleaded, “Love me. Love me,” so I took your hand.

“Dance,” I said. I wished you were dead.

At seven o’clock no sun rose over the valley. The streets were empty as we

dragged our trains home. You stopped for a moment to take up the fabric in

your hands and then—as if you knew I would need something of you—you tore

off the dirty train and stuffed it into my surprised hands.

Six years ago angels crossed the road at springtime in front of me. I stood in an

emerald green dress, alone. They carried you away with them.

The empty street wound round the river’s neck and as I crossed the bridge

on the high street, I saw the boats sail out of view. I threw the green rag after

them. I was free. I was free of you.

2

I have a memory of you alone in the night,

The rain outside, you screaming to belong,

My people you called them.

I will not accept that, I said, pushing you away,

These are not your people, these are not my people.

You wore your silver angel around your neck

As if it would protect you from hate.

Conquerors and conquered we have been

With such jewels of god hanging by our hearts.

Like the sand in the desert, you had believed

The burning train would never happen again,

That the women on their backs were the victims of barbarians,

Not our people.

“Why do you want to belong?” I had asked you.

Sometimes I feel belonging is like loving a corpse,

History’s endless funerals.

3

I return without you to Bombay, the city of our birth. Memory is a curse; what

have you done?

I search. I know that carved silver creature must be somewhere. You hadn’t taken it

with you the night of the ball, you had left it on the dresser by the window

overlooking the crab apple tree. I must find that Asho Farohar, I must wear it, I

must remember what happens when I hate, when I hate who we are because I

fear our people are killers.

You could not understand why I do not like mirrors. In the mirror in the green

dress we were the same person; my betrayal—when you decided silently in a

room full of angels to leave me—was to let you go.

4

I have been looking for you in a hundred cities;

I have been calling your name;

I watch the mountains rise up in Tehran like

Vultures worshipping the sun;

I throw my net into the Arabian Sea and pull up

Skeletons of exiles who searched for land.

Hesitant in prayer, I stand in an ancestral fire temple in Udwada

Repeating softly, humata, hukhta, huvarashta

Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

You are nowhere to be found.

Don’t my children need to know who you are?

Finally, in Pokhran, in an ancient haveli with

A Hindu shrine that leads off from a courtyard full of peacocks

I sit silently watching for a sign.

The sand moans, the well runs dry, the angels do not come.

They will not come.

Notes:

India conducted its nuclear tests in Pokhran in the Thar desert in Rajasthan, most recently in 1998. 

Indian Zoroastrians wear an Asho Farohar around their necks, symbolizing the soul’s battle between good and evil.  They first sought refuge after 800 BCE in Udwada and other sites on the coast of Gujarat.

In Godhra, Gujarat, the Sabarmati Express caught fire in 2002, killing Hindu pilgrims causing some to suspect it was an act of violence by Muslims.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It took almost a decade to finish this poem and now it is in the Beloit Poetry Journal, which I respect so much.Thanks to Lee Sharkey and John Rosenwald, editors at the Beloit Journal for all their editorial guidance and support! https://www.bpj.org/contributors/mehta-leeya

Please think about supporting this wonderful publication.

IN THE SPRING 2014 ISSUE
Poems by Alexander Booth, Temple Cone, John F. Deane, Gray Fincke, Alllison Funk, Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., Kevin Heaton, Nate Marshall, Karen McPherson, Leeya Mehta, M. P. Ritger, Jamie Ross, and more. John Rosenwald reviews new books by Nicelle Davis, Brian Komei Dempster, and TJ Jarrett.

About 'The Abduction': In 1998, I was sitting in Queen Elizabeth Hall (close to the River Cherwell, at Oxford University), when I read the headlines in the Times of India about India's nuclear tests in the Pokhran desert. Some years later I visited this part of the Rajasthan desert and began to compose these lines.  

If you want to hear more about the poem, I will be uploading a short essay on the Beloit Poet's Forum in May and look forward to comments. Will keep you posted and share the link when it is out.

Poem: David and the Hummingbird

David and the Hummingbird

For Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

Joyce tells a story of the day

the bird flew into the shed

and would not leave;

it beat its wings until it fell

exhausted to the floor.

But it didn’t end like that,

nor was this the beginning—

The morning of the Kill,

the hummingbird flew through the open door

and circled round and round the blood

“It was not interested to feed,” she said,

but just to see and understand.

It went up into the rafters

and then down again

towards the cement floor.

Its blues and greens dancing in

the light and dark;

the corners hiding it and then

like magic, letting it be seen.

David tried to make it leave;

first, sugar feeders lured it outside;

then, when it was noon, the

darkest noon they’d ever seen,

the thunder began.

He set the sugar water inside the garage door

“It must not starve,” he said.

The day was hurried, like the

wings—it beat and beat.

The world grew still behind the

murmur of the bird

as if to move, to breathe, would be too much.

The rain was sheets of ice;

it pierced the ground, it tore into the hillside’s heart

forcing the mountains to slide and the roads to close.

At dusk the rain stopped, bringing on a night that had not known a day.

The sky cleared and that was when she said she knew

the bird’s heart had begun to burst,

“You could hear it banging in your ears.”

The small buzzing body lifted up to the

ceiling one last time and dropped.

From where it lay the stag’s head was a foot away;

the eyes of the beast, strained and dead;

the bullet hole straight through its neck

revealed the moon in the night sky which shone

like a polished coin.

He picked it up to rest it for the night

in a shoebox with soft muslin cloth.

She said, “Its eyes brimmed with tears.”

Was it fear? It did not tremble.

Was it relief? Did it not know it was only David?

And he said, “It is bereft. It must be saved.”

Then began the longest night.

He left the bird to sleep beneath

the stars. It did not know

the inside of their house.

It could get disoriented in that space.

He lay beside her in

their bed, his ever faithful

heart racing beneath her hand.

Kindness cannot be measured by a single good deed—

a few here, a few there, some withheld.

Love measured out in spoons

as if it were a finite bucket of gold dust.

He would not sleep—

he tore the covers off

and shot down the stairs—

It would be cold, the raccoons might overturn the box.

The bird twitched and murmured in its sleep,

he put it on the garden table and

covered its feet.

Back in bed he tossed and turned—the coyotes would not spare its life

One a.m. and out he went again.

Carrying the box in, he saw its

eyes open and look at him.

What a strange look it gave, as if

there was no meaning there—

a still hard look, but liquid eyes,

as if it was not a bird to

speak of anything—

its mystery not a mystery at all

for it hid nothing

and revealed nothing both at once.

He sat beside it in the hall

he wrung his hands

he stood up

and paced and breathed

he towered over it, afraid of it

and yet he had to watch it once again.

It had been resting while he paced

now it turned its head

a movement so small an immeasurable dot in space

and looked up at him.

They stared into each other’s eyes

this grown man and this miniature creature of the flower world

Decades he had lived so well

this small bird seemed to know it too.

“What is the meaning of it all?” he asked aloud

The hummingbird closed its eyes and went to sleep.

He sat down again and prayed a while

As the bird’s breast rose and fell;

the morning light would bring it back;

he dreamed of it in his garden years from now.

As the sun came fiercely into the room

it was not clear any more who slept and who kept vigil—

the bird watched him as he slept

but closed its eyes again when he began to stir.

The hummingbird stayed with David until

the stag was gone, a day late, in the butcher’s van.

Their friends who’d shot the beast would send them some to taste.

David’s heart leapt with joy,

the sun was hot and the

little one was gathering its body and

shaking the sleep away.

He tried to catch its eye again but it did not look at him,

and then, as if the night was no time to go,

as if it had tried for David’s sake alone,

it died under a blazing morning sun at eleven o’clock.

There are many sorts of men—

some of them are cruel to humans

and rescue animals; they are kind to dogs.

“Some men are good for all to see,

Some men are always good,” Joyce said to me.

Essay: What kind of society do we want to live in?

A reflection on crime & punishment

September 12, 2013

Unimaginable acts of terror are perpetrated on undeserving people all the time. As we pass the twelfth anniversary of 9/11, each of us remembers where we were when we first saw thousands of people murdered on television. I was in Goa and my host, a Jewish Indian who volunteered his time teaching young Indian soldiers photography said, “Bomb the hell out of the m*f* who did this.” No act of mass violence in recent memory was more sensational and no retaliation more morally complex. As Americans debate how to punish Syria, Indians await the decision of one judge, Mr Yogesh Khanna. What will he decide should happen to the four men who brutally raped and mutilated a young woman on a Delhi bus? On Friday, he will possibly echo the sentence that many people have already given: “Hang them.” As the woman’s father said in a BBC documentary, India-A Dangerous Place to be a Woman, “Until these barbarians are alive, my mind will not rest, my sorrow will not abate. It is not that through their death I will get my daughter back but as fast as they can be hanged, the faster I will find peace.”

If the judge fails to deliver such a sentence riots may break out again and many Indians will feel their faith in the judicial system terribly shaken. So I ask all of us awaiting the sentencing, is this the society we want to build? Does a hanging bring us closer to an ethical state?

Every time I think of what happened to this girl, I have the same visceral reaction that millions of men and women have.  In the heat of the night, I want these criminals dead now. I don’t want our society to spend any time on caring for them and feeding them until they die of natural causes in prison. In the same BBC documentary the murdered woman’s father says, “My greatest regret was that I could not tell her what was in my heart before she died, nor could I hear what was in her heart.”

After watching the outcry at the torment that this woman and countless others suffer, it appears that the collective rage of our society needs to be channeled into due punishment. I feel this rage too; particularly since I have seen abuse that has not been acknowledged. But until this case, I opposed the death penalty. And so I keep asking myself: in this instance can I not make an exception?

I cannot. In the cold light of day I am committed to moving towards a society where the human rights of women and children can be upheld without the death penalty being imposed. It doesn’t discount what men like this do to women and children and even if it is a fitting punishment for these crimes, on a longer ethical paradigm, imposing the death penalty is a step backwards to a more tribal society.

I know what I want. I want freedom, liberty, justice.

Just like my mother hoped for me, I want my girls to experience public spaces without being at risk. As a woman I have the same right to inhabit a public space as a man. My place is not only in the home even if that is where I may choose to spend most of my time. Although I have to say that no one ever pointed out to me personally that the home was where I belonged.

I want journeys to be safe. Every day millions of working class Indian women have to commute long distances to jobs and return home each night to care for their families. Every time they set foot outside their home they are at risk, every time they re-enter their homes they are at risk. Theirs is a heroic battle to survive and they have to do it on their own, because so far many have had almost no support from their families and little justice if they are violated, just like I was denied justice. The framers of our Constitution gave us freedom of movement—they did not single out this right only for men and I want to live in a society where I exercise this freedom: to have the right to go where I want, when I want, without risk to my body or my life. I want my idea of India to thrive: an India where more women keep breaking the glass ceiling and run organizations and law firms, state governments, political parties and the country. I have run a legal services company in India, and in that instance I was fortunate not to have experienced any gender discrimination in the work place.

I want homes to be safe for children and women. Many of us women in India are not safe in their homes. I want perpetrators of crimes to be held responsible and their crimes to be punished but their trials to be fair. I wonder, is there real justice to be had with anything other than hanging these men? Is life in prison with hard labor or solitary confinement the answer?

I belong to a heterogeneous, complex society, with cross cutting cleavages of class, gender, religion, and ethnicity. Some say to me, you are not from the real India, because I come from a privileged class of English speaking elites educated in the private schools of South Mumbai. Others may accuse, but you don’t live here anymore. I agree with these qualifications, in many ways I have lived a somewhat sheltered existence. However, I have also travelled around India, used public transportation and had very diverse experiences. Like every Indian I have many identities. I spent most of the first 29 years of my life in Mumbai. But this is where it gets much more complicated. On the one hand I feel a little defensive of the city of my birth. I love this city, its energy is like a drug. I enjoy exploring its streets. For the most part I did not feel any more unsafe on the streets of Mumbai than in the many Western cities I have visited. Perhaps in retrospect this was a false sense of security. Possibly one of the safest cities I have ever been in is Tokyo, but then a girlfriend of mine got beaten up by a Japanese man on a crowded train only because she was a foreigner. I guess every city has its tales of unexpected violence.

I know that terrible things happen to women in Mumbai; most recently the gang rape of a photojournalist on the job. When I worked at Marine Lines, a young woman was raped just below my office building by a policeman who forced her into a police chowki in the middle of the day. I worked with a criminal lawyer who advised any woman who would listen, that the last place she should go to complain about a rape is a police station; he also advised that if a woman ever needed to go to a police station, she should always take an escort.

The threat of violence for a woman on the streets of Delhi is palpable. I recall an incident a few years ago. I was showing an American girlfriend around Old Delhi and as we exited the Jama Masjid around five in the evening, we were given the third degree by a young man on the street, “What are you doing here? Where are you from? So Bombay girls are allowed to walk around like this?” His tone and behavior became very menacing and a few other men started to close in on us. We were terrified. Suddenly, an SUV came to a furious halt in front of us and its driver told us to get in and raced us home. This taxi driver was a good man, but my uncle was livid that we had risked our lives by getting into an unknown vehicle. The girl and her friend who boarded the bus in Delhi last December made a similar choice and she ended up dead.

Mr M. Sharma, one of the defense lawyers for three of the accused rapists, was asked in the BBC interview if it was true that he had said that he had never heard of a respectable girl ever being raped. He confirmed, “Yes, certainly, certainly. We have a different culture.” The interviewer asked him “What is the difference between a respectable girl and non-respectable girl?” Mr Sharma answered, “Respectable girl and non respectable girl means if you see someone, if you feel respect about her she is respectable. If she would be respectable, this would never happen to her. Respect is a very strong shield which can’t be crossed by anybody at all. And respect comes by character, respect comes by your behavior, respect comes by your actions…You cannot say that only the rapists are responsible. She is also responsible equally. You have to protect yourself. Any dog can bite you, and that’s happened.”

The idea that the victim is to blame has to be reevaluated. The argument that you are asking for it because of the way you dress or because of your questionable choices to go to a movie with a boy is bullshit. My friend and I were in long sleeved kurtas and I had a headscarf on to shield myself from the sun. How would Mr Sharma explain one of the worst things I have ever encountered in my work for an NGO—a baby raped in Sanjay Gandhi Nagar in Mumbai until her internal organs were destroyed.

Mr Sharma has it in reverse. Sexual violence is perpetrated on people who are vulnerable and cannot defend themselves effectively. Women and children in India do not have a framework within which to fend off sexual violence, and until recently they did not have a justice system that took care of them. Acknowledging this vulnerability and not taking advantage of it is the essence of respect. At the opposite end I know Indian men who will not have sex with a seemingly consenting partner who is inebriated because they are not sure if she is really consenting to the sex. The objects of desire do not need to possess any inviolate qualities. Otherwise, when Sita passed her trial by fire, why was she rejected by Ram and sent to the forest? It was the perception of a patriarchal society that was at fault.

At the same time, I know that there are gentler spaces in this sea of violence. I want to live in the same Indian society I spent my late teens and early twenties in, where my male friends treated me as their equal. My male contemporaries come from a variety of backgrounds, some studied and lived abroad, many of them have not, yet they help around the house, they cook, they like and indulge strong women who pursue their dreams. They grapple with the role of men and women in Indian society just like we do in America.

In his essay, A Hanging, George Orwell recounts the hanging of a man. 

“The thing that I think very striking is that no one, or no one I can remember, ever writes of an execution with approval.  The dominant note is always horror.  Society, apparently, cannot get along without capital punishment—for there are some people whom it is simply not safe to leave alive—and yet there is no one, when the pinch comes, who feels it right to kill another human being in cold blood.  I watched a man hanged once.  There was no question that everybody concerned knew this to be a dreadful, unnatural action.  I believe it is always the same—the whole jail, warders and prisoners alike, is upset when there is an execution.  It is probably the fact that capital punishment is accepted as necessary, and yet instinctively felt to be wrong, that gives so many descriptions of executions their tragic atmosphere.  They are mostly written by people who have actually watched an execution and feel it to be a terrible and only partly comprehensible experience which they want to record.”

According to Amnesty International, 174 of the 193 member states of the United Nations were execution-free in 2012, so there are many societies that see merit in abolishing the death penalty. Amnesty International (http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/numbers) has been monitoring developments around the use of the death penalty and campaigning for its abolition for more than three decades particularly since research has shown it is not a deterrent. In 1977, only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. In 2012, 21 countries around the world were known to have carried out executions and at least 58 have imposed death sentences. There are many voices in India that oppose the capital punishment. See for instance, Kanimozhi's recent opinion in The Hindu.

I like the question that my husband recently posed, if we believe to act is moral, is every action we take moral? Can our actions to correct injustice create their own injustice? Just because we cannot sit by silently when chemicals suffocate children in Syria, does it mean that missile strikes are ethical or even useful?

The idea of India is a very powerful concept for me. As the world’s largest democracy, I have a great deal of faith and pride in it. We are a nation of social movements, of men and women who stood up to sati, to dowry, to colonialism. It isn’t convenient for me to oppose the death penalty in the light of such terrible crimes, and my view is not from the trenches. My grandfather worked for a British company that doled out luxuries, and life was much less comfortable for him after he retired. Yet, he held on to this idea of India as a place where we were free, a better place than the one he knew during the Raj, even if it was less comfortable for him. It was a place where famines were less likely, the press was mostly free, and the common man who had gone without a shirt on his back was now clothed. But for the vast majority, justice has always been out of reach. Now, with the tremendous social outcry to end violence against women, it might just be within grasp. The police and courts in Delhi have been shamed into appearing to respond more effectively to a woman’s right to safety and freedom of movement.

I learned quite early that sometimes we need to use force to defend those we love, the integrity of our ideals and our country. I was greatly influenced by my childhood hero, Khusro Rustamji, my grandfather’s best friend. Rustamji was Prime Minister Nehru’s personal bodyguard and rose to be the highest ranking police officer in the country. He was the founding director of the Border Security Force and later Secretary of the Home Ministry. He had dealt with the worst atrocities that human beings are capable of including war crimes. He was a master at conflict management, he was prepared to use force when necessary but always worked tirelessly for a diplomatic solution. He orchestrated India’s support of the Bangladeshi resistance in the struggle for Bangladeshi independence, and cleared the Chambal ravines of notorious dacoits that had historically terrorized the region. My grandfather and Rustamji would talk politics, and I was allowed to join in. I picture this discussion with him. He always seemed to have his finger on the pulse of the nation, and he may have said to me that the crimes of the Delhi rapists could only be punished by death. I imagine I would have told him what I thought, and he would have listened attentively like he always did, and then, perhaps he would have said, “Maybe I agree with you.” So though I am not sure what he would say about the death penalty in this case, Rustamji, like Nehru, Gandhi, King and Mandela, was invigorated by a vision of a future that was kinder than the reality of the trenches. These men had a longer view of society. They were humanists who preferred to use non-violent resistance and persuasion to drive home their ideals for human communities. They too felt the everyday rage we feel at the shackles of colonialism, racism, and the degradation of women. In such leaders we have a paradigm for resistance and change: we are not weak when we choose a more ethical punishment for those who harm us. It reflects well on us. This is the idea of India that I hope that Judge Khanna will find himself holding on to when he delivers his sentence tomorrow.

Essay: Riding the Metro Bus

The 50^th Anniversary of the March on Washington, August 24^th, 2013

On the 24th of August 2013, my five year old and I plan our trip to the Mall to see the March on Washington. She likes protests. Living in DC, she has been on a few marches and the whole family did a parody on the Occupy Movement for Halloween a couple of years ago. She was a protestor: “Share Share Share!” screamed her sign. My baby was a banker in a black suit and tie. I was Wall Street — I wore a brick wall made of cardboard with a green street sign and we perched the baby on my wall for photographs. My husband was a giant inflated bull.

We are looking at the March on Washington website. I read my daughter excerpts of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech and then play the audio: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” She runs off to play. I think of the painting by Norman Rockwell: The Problem We All Live With. I want to talk to her about it, ask her if she remembers seeing it at the National Portrait Gallery, along with New Kids in the Neighborhood. Two stunning visuals of a segregated world from a child's perspective. 

We are a biracial family. I am an Indian Parsee Zoroastrian and my husband is a white Catholic American. I am not sure what box to check when I am confronted with most official forms in the U.S., which have a section, albeit non-mandatory, on race. Check all that apply: White, Black, Asian, American Indian, and then a separate question whether you are Hispanic. When I first came to the U.S. and had to fill in the social security application, I was puzzled. How do I classify myself in racial terms? In India I was used to ethnic and religious classifications, but racial classification seemed anachronistic. What was I? I was not white, even though Parsees sometimes refer to themselves as — and I say this with some trepidation — Aryans, as if the last century never happened and that’s an acceptable label. I was not black. I was Asian, but that was hardly a racial classification — out of all the races I was physically most dissimilar to Far East Asians. And although South Asians consider themselves to be a broad ethnic group, I can’t think of any other group that has every single racial type represented and then some.

After doing a degree in public policy I get it that data on race is very important for formulating policy in America. We are not living in a post-racial America and religion and race are the primary cleavages, if you set aside social class. But times are changing. When I first came here in 2004, I rarely saw a person of color in Georgetown. Not so any more. We have a Black President in the White House, we have restaurants buzzing with diversity on 14th street, and we are all learning to assimilate. Like ink spreading on a sheet of paper, North West DC is getting color in its cheeks.

As an Indian I am well attuned to the subject of color and how it enters into the everyday. When I was growing up, girls and boys were considered more likely to find eligible spouses if they were fair skinned. I had aunts who did not go outside when it was sunny and always wore long sleeves and avoided tea and coffee to keep their skin from darkening. The Indian fairness cream market, led by multinational behemoth Unilever's Fair & Lovely, is estimated at about $400 million in annual revenue and was most recently featured in the online edition of The Atlantic Monthly in an article by Elizabeth Segran. Matrimonial advertisements gloss over darker complexions as ‘wheatish.’ We all know the truth that a person cannot determine the color of his skin. Fairness creams can disfigure and lead to serious health issues, including cancer. And yet, like that elusive elixir of youth, lighter skin continues to be sought after in South Asian, Far Eastern and even some African cultures. Why?

In The Dangers of not Talking to your Children about Race, KJ Dell'Antonia of the New York Times explains that research shows that children become aware of skin color at a very young age. They won’t always manifest this knowledge, avoiding the subject if adults ignore it, which in turn magnifies its importance in their minds. But if adults address it, children reveal interesting observations of their own, often reflecting social biases, making it wiser to address race and color rather than letting it be an elephant in the room. My elder child is white like my husband and she has always been aware of this. When we bathed her when she was very little she would say, “I am the same color as daddy.” For a while she seemed to asking, “Why don’t you and I have the same skin?” I could tell it was something that preoccupied her and still does, particularly since my younger child has a skin tone similar to mine. There is no moral significance given to identifying these colors, just a sense I have that sometimes my daughter would like to be the same as me and at other times just like daddy. She is trying to understand how biology works and if her sister is somehow special because she shares her skin color with me.

I look up to find she’s back, ready for an explanation. “So mum, what is freedom?” I had asked her earlier if she knew what it meant.

“Can you imagine there was a time when kids who looked different from each other couldn’t go to school together?”

As if it’s the most preposterous thing, she rolls her eyes and says, “Oh Mum!" She adds, "I don’t like that.”

“Well,” I say, a little heavy handed, “that’s freedom, you are free to go to school with your friends. Tell your sister we are going on a bus ride today. Do you remember Rosa Parks? We can think of her on the bus.” A couple of weeks ago I had bought stamps with Rosa Parks’ face on them and my daughter and I watched a documentary on YouTube about who she was. Thinking of Rosa Parks always makes me emotional.

So we feed the girls breakfast—fresh local peaches from the Women’s Market in Bethesda, banana oatmeal—and pack our bags to head to the Mall. It takes about an hour of focused energy to get ready to go out with the kids. That hour does not include showers for the parents. We need to get out before nap time.

Checklist: water bottles for each of us; flax and buckwheat banana pancakes and raspberries for the girls; full change of clothes for them, in case they head into a fountain on the Mall; diapers, wipes, sunblock, hats. Big decision: which stroller? The easy to fold one that grandma insisted we would not be able to live without and gave the baby for her birthday—that really just fits one small kid, but allows the two year old to ride on the five year old’s lap for short distances—or the heavy-duty Bob jogging stroller we have on loan from a kind friend, which allows both girls to be pushed uphill without breaking my wrists. (Since our rental apartment burnt down in October 2012, we have had more offers of strollers from our generous community than one family can possibly use).

The girls are very excited to take the bus to Farragut Square, just North of the White House. From there we plan to walk a mile or so South to the Lincoln Memorial to experience the March on Washington, which began at 9am on New Jersey Avenue and will end at the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial, where we will greet it. Fifty years ago on the 28th of August 1963, Martin Luther King gave his ‘I have a dream’ speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after the original March on Washington.

We all tumble into the N6 bus. I am hauling the stroller folded up into its awkward shape, and find the wheels don’t lock in this position. I struggle with it at the back door and realize it is blocking access so I move it into the handicapped section, which is empty. It wobbles and I am afraid that it’s going to brush against someone. I have observed that in America people like their space respected more so than in India, where strangers will just pick up your children to help out and seat them on their laps. Luckily the bus is not full. The kids and my husband find a spot to settle down and my husband keeps a hand on the toddler so she doesn’t topple over with the jolting of the bus. I decide it is safer to open up the stroller and lock the wheels so it doesn’t slide into anyone. It’s not ideal but there is enough space in the gangway to walk by.

A lady from our apartment building who is riding on the bus sympathizes, “It’s a lot to do, isn’t it.”

“It’s not so bad,” I say. I am thinking of Rosa Parks. We are riding a bus on a historic anniversary. Fifty years ago we couldn’t have all sat where we liked, mixed into this bus, black, white, me and mine. This is a special day.

But then another voice pipes up, surprising me, “You shouldn’t bring that stroller on the bus.” The tone is offensive.

A stranger starts to berate me. “You are taking up two people’s seats, you could hurt someone if they trip over that thing.” I count at least ten vacant seats around us.

I try to justify myself. We need the stroller for the kids since we have more than three miles of walking ahead of us. She cuts me off, “You are disrespecting everyone by riding the bus. You should have taken a cab.”

Sure I could have. I could have even taken my own car. How could I explain to her that on this day, this of all other days, riding the bus was symbolic, our own small, token homage to Ms. Parks. 

People stack bicycles on the front of buses, holding up traffic while they haul them on, we regularly have wheelchairs on the bus that are bigger than the stroller. Bus drivers have to come over to help out all the time. I feel the woman is being unreasonable but she continues to scold me. My eyes begin to smart. The other passengers are embarrassed and look away. The woman is being mean spirited and I feel hurt. When I express that to her she backs off. Later, someone reassures me, “You did the right thing. It is important to stand up to bullies. Maybe next time she won’t be nasty to another mother.” When I remark that other people on the bus seemed to be uncomfortable, he says, “People don’t like conflict. But you could tell they thought you were doing the right thing.”

Every time we are in a public space we have a choice. We can voice our opinions kindly and respectfully, or we can make a person uncomfortable and defensive. This lady was rude. Her opinion could have been voiced differently, but since it was not, I also have the right to push back.

It is interesting how, now that I am a parent, I have become more aware of petty intolerance. Like the time my friend was approached by a resident at our building complex who told her, “You are not welcome here, children were never allowed to use the pool before.” And the man sat and stared threateningly at the family, making them so uncomfortable that they had to leave.

This sort of community policing has to be seen for what it is — it is curtailing the freedom of certain groups in public places. We all need to look out for our communities, but not at the expense of other groups living respectfully in a shared space. Communities that support vigilantes are not necessarily safer, they can be hostile and sometimes even violent. They assume that parents are not doing their job, and at another extreme, that kids like Trayvon Martin do not belong and need to be monitored.

It’s a subtle thing. I am not likening my ride on the bus to Rosa Parks or to Trayvon Martin or to the men and women who cannot get the jobs and opportunities they seek because of their race. The small battles I have fought in my community — for example, disabling the ban on young children using the pool — were supported by laws like the Fair Housing Act, that have been put into place by people like Ms. Parks.

I grew up in a new India struggling to teach its citizens the values of freedom and equality. In my school, J B Petit, differences in ethnicity and social class were played down and hidden behind school uniforms; it was drilled into us as children, “United we stand, divided we fall.”  Which is why I assert, I have not suffered any form of racial discrimination, and I imagine my children will probably not be discriminated against. We are likely more free and entitled than any generation before us. However, I do see the need for more balanced communication in public places and in our communities, so that we can relax and enjoy one another. Negative interactions make one feel small, unwelcome, on edge. They make us wary, petty, cautious, and after many such experiences, a person can become angry and militant.

The bus stops to pick up a handicapped man. I fold up the stroller again so I can move out of the way. My husband gets up and takes it over, putting it on his seat and I sit with the baby. The man who takes my place is in a wheelchair. He looks at the girls and smiles. I smile back at him.

But I know the battle for a safe, just community is not over. Many boys are still especially at risk on our streets in America just like women are especially at risk in both public and private spaces in India. Near the Lincoln Memorial, Trayvon Martin’s story is on many placards along with the same issue that raged fifty years ago: jobs. In every single age group, black men and women have double the unemployment rate of whites in the same category (See the Bureau of Labor Statistics). On the news another woman is gang raped in India. As we walk around the Mall, people have their signs up—Dream in Color—their faces shine and the spirit of the March washes over me and calms me. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. I too “refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.”